What happened to the Spirit of Flight 93?

WARNING: graphic videos, portraying severe beatings and extreme cowardice

As a nation, we were shocked, horrified and frightened on 9-11-01. We had been caught with our defenses down, more concerned with who killed a Washington, DC intern than we were about who was coming to kill us. The silver lining in that extremely dark cloud was the bravery displayed by the firefighters, police and paramedics of New York, and by the passengers of United Flight 93. Knowing it was probably a suicide mission, the passengers fought to take back their plane, which eventually crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Their bravery likely saved the White House or the US Capitol. The last words of Todd Beamer, “Let’s roll!”, have become icons of American bravery, as much as “Remember Goliad, remember the Alamo!”, “If they mean to have a war, let it begin here!” and “Nuts!”

How things have changed in 10 years.

I’ve recently seen a couple of videos that make me hang my head in shame at the cowardice of the American Sheeple. Both involved bystanders, well…standing by while someone got the living crap beaten out of them. The fist took place at a pizza parlor, where a woman trying to break in line got mad at a guy who was describing the situation to someone on a cellphone. She went and got her boyfriend, an ex-drug convict, who proceeded to beat the snot out of the guy, knocking him unconscious and breaking an orbital bone, while the rest of the customers watched and did nothing:


Video of attack from TruTV

So much for the old adage, “Pick on someone your own size”, eh?

The second took place at a Baltimore McDonald’s, where a group of girls continually beat another girl, kicked her, and dragged her by the hair, while the (apparent) store manager puts up a weak-sister attempt to stop the attack. Finally, one brave folder lady attempted to intervene, but the attack continued. The McDonald’s staff merely stands by and watches, at one point, even urging the assailants to leave, because the police were on the way. Meanwhile, the young victim lay on the floor in convulsions -- she’d been beaten into a seizure:

McDonald's attack video

What the hell has happened to us? Where’s the Spirit of Flight 93? In both of these cases, the victims could have been killed and may have suffered permanent injury. Is that the kind of nation we are now, willing to stand by while our fellow Americans are attacked by gangs of thugs, or by gigantic ex-convicts? Are we so afraid of getting hurt ourselves that we won’t go to the aid of another? Are we so sorry that the best we can do is catch it all on our iPhones, so we can post it on You Tube or “worldstarhiphop.com”.

Thankfully, not all of us are complete cowards. Recently, in Sarasota, Florida, a young Marine and his wife made the “mistake” of trying to quiet a crowd of teens and 20-somethings at a screening of “Little Fockers”:

Article and eyewitness statements about attack on Marine and his wife

A crowd estimated at 50-100 followed the couple out to the parking lot and attacked them, while the theater manager reportedly did nothing to intervene. The Marine and his wife were both punched and kicked, and could have been severely injured (or killed), had it not been for one brave CCW permit holder, who drew his pistol and held the mob at bay until the police arrived (remember: when seconds matter, the police are only minutes away). In the end, five of the thugs were arrested, the couple was slightly injured, and the Good Samaritan CCW holder faded back into obscurity. Whoever he is, I hope he realizes he possesses a quality that is apparently lacking in much of our countrymen these days: guts.

Notice I haven’t brought race into the story at all … it’s for each of you to decide for yourselves where you stand on that issue.

The fact that there are thugs and criminals in our society is nothing new. Violence is part of human nature, and many never rise above that primal instinct. But in the past, there were enough good guys to stand up to the bad guys, whether it was on the playground, the streets of Anytown USA, or the beaches of Iwo Jima. Somewhere along the way, we lost our guts, we lost our spine. These days, we’re so bent on self-preservation and looking out for #1, that we’re afraid to stand up to thugs and protect those who need our protection. "But, but, but...if I say something, that big guy might punch me, too! It would hurt!"

I dare say if all those standing in that pizza line had turned on the bully, the young man may not have gotten his eye socket broken. Had those McDonald’s employees been more concerned with stopping the attack and less with shooting a cellphone video, the young woman may not have been beaten into a seizure. We're no longer the nation that Admiral Yamamoto warned against invading, because in America, there was "a rifle behind every blade of grass." We're a nation that's so scared of suffering a bloody nose that we'll let an innocent stranger get beaten to a bloody pulp by thugs. That must really intimidate the hell out of the unseen enemy, who's preparing another attack on us as we fret over what Lindsay Lohan is going to wear to her next court appearance. The Chicoms, the Russians, North Koreans, Iranians, Venezuelans and Mexican drug cartels must really be shaking in their boots.

Wisconsin protest shows need for conservative pop culture

What stands out in my mind, after three days of watching video from the public employee protests in Madison, Wisconsin, is the presence of young people at the protest. I'm not talking young teachers or state employees, I'm talking kids!

School kids who should be sitting in class, learning about what caused the budget crisis in the first place. Kids who should be learning about it in terms of math, civics and economics. Kids whose teachers should be passing along that knowledge without any bias or partisanship. It would be a perfect opportunity to explain how the tax structure is unfairly stacked against those who produce wealth and actually create jobs, but favors those who produce the least, despite the fact they're by far the biggest beneficiaries of government largess.

But their schools are closed, their desks are empty, because their teachers have called in sick to attend the protest. The classes that should be taught are not, because the Leftist beliefs of their teachers (and other unionized state employees...which is all of them in non-right to work Wisconsin) demand the students be loaded up and taken on a field trip that would bring a tear of pride to Hugo Chavez's eye.

Here are some examples of what's going on in Madison, and on the streets outside the Statehouse, that you'll probably not see in the drive-by media. I found them on You Tube. In the first video, we see how much the students really know about why they're there:



I really like the kid who says, "We're trying to stop whatever this dude is doing." Yeah...like, you know, that dude who, like, runs things is, you know, like, not doin' something that, like, my teacher is all like 'oh man, that sucks' and everything, you know what I'm sayin'?

Then there are the protesters outside, blocking traffic on the taxpayer-funded streets of Madison:



Note the sign, at :30, which reads "People Over Profit"...class agitation that would make ol' Chairman Mao, Uncle Joe Stalin, and Marx, Lenin and Engels beam with pride.

Finally, look at the high school kids, and some that look junior high age, wielding bullhorns and chanting their pro-union battle cries, right in the Capitol rotunda:



17 years ago, I first heard Limbaugh talk about the indoctrination being forced upon little "skulls full of mush" in government schools. That generation, raised on Ritalin and fed a steady low-accomplishment, high-self-esteem mental diet, are now among those shouting into bullhorns and waving protest signs, instead of teaching their students the harsh cold realities of civics, taxation, and economics. If we don't reach today's skulls full of mush --thanks, Rush -- our future is, in the best case scenario, a more extreme version of what we're seeing on the streets of Madison today (and likely in other state capitals in days to come). The more likely scenario is that we won't have a nation at all, at least not one that resembles what I was taught to love, and defend to the death if need be.

As I've said before, kids don't surf the Heritage Foundation website, they don't listen to Beck or Hannity, and they don't watch Fox News. They listen to rap and "death metal", watch movies and reality TV, play video games and daydream they're LeBron James. If they get any "news" at all (and I seriously doubt the kid who calls Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker 'that dude' is a news consumer), it comes from Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert.

Pop culture is the way we're going to have to reach them. We've got to deliver our message in an envelope they'll actually open. We've got to reach them on the dance floor, the mosh pit, in their cars, at the movie theaters, and through their X-Boxes. Otherwise, all our words are going to sail over their heads, in one ear and out the other, and will sound like Charlie Brown's teacher.

I attended a Tea Party rally yesterday on the steps of the Idaho Statehouse. The theme was "no new taxes", and the keynote speaker was Grover Norquist. His speech was interesting and engrossing to all but the three very loud, very profane, 30-something or younger hecklers. I noticed that, out of a crowd of about 60, only a dozen or so appeared to be early 30s or younger. That included the media, the profane hecklers, and two passers-by, who stopped to see what the hubbub was all about.

Even if school kids had been allowed to take a field trip to the rally, the majority wouldn't have gotten a thing out of it. Norquist is a very knowledgeable and engaging speaker, but to a teen or 20-something, he would have been Charlie Brown's teacher. He didn't have a hip-hop beat behind his speech, or a wall of grinding guitars, or even a Hollywood entourage worthy of a crappy HBO show.

A conservative, patriotic, smaller-and-less-intrusive government message is what's going to save our country, but if it's Charlie Brown's teacher delivering it, kids will shrug their shoulders and go back to their X-Boxes.